We started out our Peru trip with a flight from Mendoza to Arequipa, via Lima. The first day in Peru was quite a blur given all the travel, but we still managed to make an important discovery – Peru has by far the best food we had in all of South America so far. We’ll touch on that more later, but for now we’ve been convinced that whenever we do another trip down south, we’re going to focus on the food scene here…

The next morning we got in our rental car and set off for the first destination: Colca Canyon. Before we get to the meat of the update, it’s important to stress to the dear reader what the driving situation in Peru is like. Imagine the game Hungry Hungry Hippos, except all of the balls are cars and all of the hippos are busses – driving through a city in Peru is something like that, where chaos abounds and only the most aggressive hippo gets to its destination on time… Nevertheless between Sam and I, we drove quite a bit through Peru and even had some enjoyable times stopping on the side of the road to take pictures of unexpected animals! One thing I would NOT recommend is to take the ‘scenic’ routes that Google Maps offers in the country… this turned our ~3hr trip from Arequipa to Colca Canyon into a 6hr dirt path extravaganza through the Reserva Nacional Salinas y Aguada Blanca.

Exciting transit aside, the Colca Canyon trip was actually a great place to visit that we had never thought to check out. This is a region in the mountainous southeast Peru which is home to the ‘Grand Canyon of South America’. We stayed in a small bed and breakfast called El Portal in Coporaque and shoutout to John & Stephanie for a phenomenal time while there – not only were they great hosts and helped us navigate the area, but the home cooking and freeflowing coca tea made us feel right at home and not too altitude sick at the ~14,000ft we were staying at!

One of the other things the Colca Canyon is known for besides it’s kayaking and rafting, is the fact that the Andean Condor can be found here pretty reliably on a daily basis, so hundreds of tourists show up in tour busses early in the morning to snap some pictures of the majestic bird. Well… we did the same, and as we found out there are entrepreneurial spirits who come dressed as condors every day just in case you miss the flight… Thankfully we also saw the slightly smaller, but slightly realer condors and it was definitely a unique sight to see!

We didn’t spend too much time in the area, but one unique thing we wanted to do before heading to our next destination was see some of the ancient ruins around this area – in the same spirit as Machupicchu, Uyo Uyo is an archeological spot of significant Inka importance. The only differences between the two is (1) the difficulty of getting here and (2) the lack of designation as a World Heritage site by UNESCO, making Uyo Uyo completely empty and a wonderful place for us to visit. What we didn’t appreciate is that the ~500ft elevation gain hike would kick our asses quite so much at 14,000ft… turns out oxygen is pretty important at the partial pressures it is found at around sea level. In any case, we made some friends at the site with two ladies who despite speaking no English, spoke the universal language of exhaustion and walked around the complex with us. We’re definitely glad to have made this stop as it will be a nice foil to the likely packed Machupicchu later this trip…

Colca came and went really quickly, but as we drove out and on our way to our next destination (Lake Titicaca), we had the great opportunity to be stopped for multiple llama crossings. Like Yellowstone, only fluffier!